This spring, I’ve been developing my skills with cyanotypes, printmaking with a sunlight-sensitive wash, which I had previously only dabbled with. The idea of working on a specific cyanotype piece emerged from my natural curiosity and delight in process experimentation and my desire to share a wide range of a pieces at a art exhibition I am a part of in June, 2022. Cyanotypes originally caught my eye because of my love of photography, the satisfaction I find in working within a process and the contentment that build inside of me when I work in greyscale.
In early 2022, I took this photo of the sky while I was visiting the Rio Grande arroyo where I live in Las Cruces, NM. I was delighted how the photograph so clearly expressed the sky gradation and a project emerged. I wanted to recreate this gradation using an underexplored cyanotype kit in my supply shelf.
With further reflection I decided to work with a more traditional landscape. I returned to the arroyo and took this photo with the Robledo Mountains and the dry riverbed under the blue sky.
Over the past two weeks I’ve made over two dozen cyanotype prints from a negative of this photo. In the process, not only have I become more confident with my skills, but I also developed some of my own tools to support this production and created a process that I can easily replicate, day after day, in the bathroom of my apartment.
The clear blue sky, the Robledo Mountains and I have gotten to know each other quite well in this time. As I continued to work on the process and examine the photo, the mountain, which I generally consider so big and ever-present, becomes humble against the vastness of the sky. And I started to see the mountain as myself.
My Presence. My stillness. My humbleness under such a big blue sky.
As I continued to explore these prints I found myself thinking about the yoga posture Tadasana, also known as mountain pose, which I’ve worked with many times.
Once I connected the sensations of printing with the sensations of my mindfulness practices, my process of developing these cyanotypes changed considerably. What had been fairly chaotic, with spilled chemicals, broken glass and a bathroom covered with blue splatters, began to coalesce into a more elegant and manageable set of instructions that I was presenting to myself. A voice in my inner ear lead my movements, which reminded me of my yoga teachers and their gentle reminders to “move with your breath” and “root yourself into the ground.”
Like finding comfort in a rooted and stable mountain pose, or any dedicated mindfulness posture, my cyanotype process has required a lot of experimentation. I’ve used exposure times from 1 minute all the way to 20 min and have kept notes on various paper textures, application brushes and time until sunset. As my thoughts about this mountain and about mountain pose broadened, my life waiting during the exposure time became more still. Rather than trying to multitask and “efficiently use” the 10 or 20 minutes it takes for exposure, I’ve found myself just breathing; sitting next to the papers baking in the sun, taking in the bird songs and the shifting shadows created by our revolving planet.
With practice, my desire for the “perfect print” which was the goal when I started this process, faded away. Today, I see these prints in relation to my work with mindfulness practices. When I began these practices I would get frustrated when I was unable to remain still and focused. The cyanotype process presented similar feels when I rushed and didn’t give the sensitizer time to dry, or I got distracted with my multitasking and forgot to set the timer.
My meditation and yoga teachers showed me that the skill isn’t to not have distracting thoughts while I am doing mindfulness work, but to have the thought, notice it, and let it go. There is no need to follow it. Now I bring a kindred energy to these prints when find the signs of wayward fingerprints on the glass, leave uneven streaks in the sensitizer wash, or when I unwittingly splashed water on the not-yet-exposed paper. I’ve grown to be able to notice these imperfections, think, “Oh.” and then move on. I don’t have to celebrate them, but I also don’t have to condemn them or myself.
Here is a slideshow of some of the prints. Click on the photos to move to the next one.
